Aluminum Sculpture in Grant Park

Here's a quick follow up on the sculpture I helped assemble for the weekend sculptor guy. It got installed yesterday near Grant Park, just east of LSD by the lake. Here's a picture. It doesn't look all that bad.

The sculpture is all aluminum, about eight feet high by twelve long. Maybe six feet wide at the widest. Total weight is probably around six to seven hundred pounds, and I felt every pound on my back at one point or another. (See the curvy tall wedge on the left hand end? That connects to the remainder via an internal pipe, and I hefted the whole thing up with my legs while they fastened it together. I think I'm rated to near 1,000 pounds, but don't tell OSHA).

I received (checking myself out right now, naked, and did you really need to know that?) twenty bruises, thirteen superficial cuts and scrapes on the fingers and arms, one deep cut on my right forearm, a knot on the head, four 2nd degree burns (all on the fingers), an abrasion on my knuckle from a slip at the belt sander, another from grinding a point on a tungsten electrode for the TIG torch, sore muscles (still!) and one ruined pair of jeans.

In payback, I welded about forty feet of seamed edges, ground down same footage, sanded and buffed about one hundred square feet of sheet metal, and probably sent a good ten pounds of aluminum powder and chips to the landfill. I honestly don't know how many grinding wheels, sanding belts, and emory cloth we went through.

Hearing about how fine aluminum powder can be explosive, we tried setting it on fire. No dice.

Now, I finally get to work on my own shit. Not quite as big.